Media Expert: Trump’s daily briefings ‘exaggeration and outright lies’

US President Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings are considered so full of disinformation by media experts that they have called on networks to stop their live broadcasts.

The president has made persistently false, misleading or dubious claims about the pandemic, some of which had to be immediately corrected by health experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, a report by The Independent said.

Trump is using his daily briefings, which are meant to give the public critical and truthful information about this frightening crisis, as a substitute for the campaign rallies eviscerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

After weeks of playing down the risks of the coronavirus – at one point claiming there were only 15 cases and that they would soon be down to "close to zero" – the president has now claimed that he predicted it would be a pandemic before anyone else.

The president has consistently failed to follow advice on social distancing, appearing on a stage at the White House every day surrounded by officials. As recently as last week he was continuing to shake hands.

Margaret Sullivan, writing in The Washington Post, asserts that "Trump is doing harm and spreading misinformation while working for his own partisan political benefit – a naked attempt to portray himself as a wartime president bravely leading the nation through a tumultuous time, the FDR of the 21st century."

In The New York Times, Jennifer Senior writes that people should call the president's briefings what they are – "propaganda".

"We may as well be watching newsreels approved by the Soviet Politburo. We're witnessing the falsification of history in real time. When Donald Trump, under the guise of social distancing, told the White House press corps on Thursday that he ought to get rid of 75 to 80 percent of them – reserving the privilege only for those he liked – it may have been chilling, but it wasn't surprising. He wants to thin out their ranks until there's only Pravda in the room," she adds.

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Senior contrasts his performances with the factual briefings being given on a regular basis by Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Referring to Trump, she adds, "Only a liar – and a weak man with delusions of competence – would be so unnerved by the facts."

On Friday, Rachel Maddow, an MSNBC host, said the White House briefings should be taken off the air because the president's misinformation "could cost lives".

She said, "I know we ought to be getting used to this kind of thing by now, but I'm not. President Trump today, again, just flat-out wrong in public about this malaria drug that has gotten stuck in his mind, quite some distance from the facts.

"If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape but if he keeps lying like this every day on stuff this important, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it's gonna cost lives."

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